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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Preventing Animal Testing with Better Husbandry #Science

The husbandry in this case refers to management of the various types of experimental chemicals which are being used for the testing. There is tremendous secrecy between manufacturers of such chemicals to prevent theft of their secrets and the result of which is there's a great deal of duplicated testing which therefore results in the deaths of more lab animals. The current research tries to address that.

To ensure human safety, agricultural chemical formulations, such as pesticides, are tested on animals. Credit: University of York

There's nothing to be gained by reviewing the ethics of the matter since we all hate it but most realize we don't have any better way.

Scientists at the University of York and SimOmics Ltd have developed a new online data sharing system which could reduce the need for hundreds of laboratory tests on animals.SimOmics Ltd, a spin-out company which includes scientists from the University's electronic engineering, environment, mathematics, and computer science departments, claim that the new web-based system, developed for the agricultural chemical production industry, could significantly reduce the number of tests on animals by allowing chemical formulations to be shared between companies.

That sounds good but you wonder how they can make that happen and well you might when any types of corporate entities are notoriously poor in sharing information in that way or much of any way.

Professor Timmis said: "The reason this kind of data has not been shared before is because the ingredients of formulations are kept confidential.

"Our new system will explore whether putting an evidence-based data management in place, which can be provided to a system regulator, will help facilitate the sharing of confidential data and models in an acceptable way, potentially cutting the use of animal testing in the thousands each year."

- PO

Maybe you get critical and think that will never work but what if it does because they have really put the credible design into the way it works. You won't be able to tell for sure about the design of the mechanism from the source article but you will see the caliber of people doing it and that cadre is impressive.

The win comes out this way.

"We estimate that the new system we are working on could reduce the need for tests on more than 1,000 animals a year."

- PO

This maybe you think that's not so many but I'm betting you can predict the vote if we ask those thousand bunnies what we should do.

The Rockhouse has high confidence research like this and other forms will in the end significantly reduce or eliminate animal testing since we see the development of synthetic organs, etc specifically for that purpose. Maybe the above is a baby step but it's not the only one and, taken together, it makes a big one.